Well Rested
by clair beaubien
Summary: 7.17 WIP - missing scene/tag scene of Dean and Sam getting out of the psych ward. WIP. One bad word.
1. Chapter 1

I got Sam back.

Cas – I don't know that I'll ever get Cas back, or even if I even want him back. He gave me Sammy back, so points for that. But I don't know if it's _enough_ points, not after the damning and damaging way he took Sam away from me.

But I got Sam back.

I was working on about nineteen hours of sleep total for the past seven or nine days, and I wanted nothing more than to drop into that psych ward bed right next to Sam and just go comatose for a year. But I couldn't. I knew I couldn't.

What I did know was that as soon as Cas healed Sam – and Cas _had_ to be able to heal Sam – as soon as he did that, we were going to have to haul ass out of there. Hopefully Cas would be able to Angel-Air us out. But if not, it wouldn't be the first hospital – or even the first psych ward – Sam and I had 'angel-aired' ourselves out of.

Then Cas healed Sam and lost himself doing it and I knew I had to get Sam out of there, somewhere safe and sometime _soon_. As Sam pulled himself out of bed and shakily got Cas turned to lean against the metal headboard so he wouldn't topple onto the floor – because even in his tortured, tormented, just-returned-to-sanity state, Sam's first thought was to help the man responsible for his torment - my exhausted brain went on autopilot: get Sam dressed, create a diversion, get us through the locked door at the end of the hall and out to the car and to another time zone as soon as possible.

I pulled Sam's clothes and boots out of the bottom of his white metal cupboard and shoved them at him.

"Get dressed. _Fast._"

Even half comatose himself, Sam knew what I meant. We can get dressed in less than two minutes when we have to, and right now, he had to. He took the clothes and moved away from the bed, out of view of the door, to swap his jeans and shirts for his hospital issue crap. I finished getting Cas safely stowed on the bed, looking for any hint or clue or sign that he was anywhere in there, that _anyone _was in there, Cas or Jimmy or Emmanuel, but all I got was a vacant stare. I tried to care, but – I was too tired to care.

I turned back and Sam was resting against his little white desk thing, just finishing getting his boots on. He looked up at me and nodded that he was ready. It was time for the diversion. I went to the door and shouted down the hallway.

"Hey! We need some help in here!"

In no time flat two nurses burst into the room and I gestured them to Castiel, who was still and silent and staring on the bed. As Sam slipped out the door behind them, the nurses tried to rouse Cas, starting in with the _"Sir? Can you hear me? Sir?"_ waste of time. They got as much nothing out of him as I'd gotten.

"What happened?" One of them asked me, but it wasn't like I would've told her anything, even if I wasn't too dead on my feet to withstand an interrogation.

"I don't know. I found him like that."

"Is he with you?"

I swallowed and shook my head.

"No, he's not with me."

She gave me a '_we'll see about that'_ look then jerked her head to the door and told me I needed to leave the room. Oh, happy to oblige. I walked out to Sam and prayed to nobody in particular that he was strong enough and lucid enough and happy enough to leave, and that the nurses were too busy working on Castiel to notice that their _actual_ patient was escaping under their noses.

"C'mon, let's hit the road."

Still functioning on nearly-comatose, Sam knew the drill. He pulled himself upright and started walking down the hallway like he was _just fine, thanks for asking,_ and I walked behind him, keeping an eye on him, hoping he wouldn't face-plant until after we got to the car.

There was some interest in the hallway of what was going on in the room that nurses and orderlies were swarming into, people looking out of their rooms and talking amongst themselves. I put my hand on Sam's shoulder and kept him moving straight and casually for the locked door.

A nurse was coming through the door just as we were heading out and I patted my hand on Sam's shoulder like I was comforting him and because the best place to hide is sometimes right out in the open, I gave her my best '_visiting a loved one here is always so hard_' look and she held the door for us and gave me her own '_yes it is, isn't it?_' look and she patted my arm and then we were out the door and on our way to getting safely the hell out of there.

Then I could drive us a few states away while Sammy slept and didn't die.

Sam wasn't ready to leave yet. Of course.

"We can't leave Cas here." He said as we got to the car.

We couldn't, but we _had _to. If this had happened only a few months before, whoever was in that bed up there, whether Sam or Cas or just some civilian we happened across who had demons on their ass, we would've taken them to Bobby's and permanently installed them in the panic room.

But it wasn't a few months ago and there was no panic room and there was no Bobby and that locked ward was the safest place for Cas and sometimes cutting our losses was the only way to survive.

Sam still took some convincing. Of course. Even after everything, _everything,_ that had happened, Sammy still thought of Cas as a friend. _I _wasn't ready to think of him at all. Not yet.

"All of our friends are dead." I reminded Sam bluntly and we got in the car and started putting asphalt between us and 'Club Psychotropic Med'.

I was still exhausted and my mind was still on auto pilot, planning out the rest of our day: Sam would sleep, I'd drive us a few hundred miles before we stopped and then I'd wake Sam up for some milk and vitamin supplements to ease him out of his eight day starvation diet, then I'd drive another few hundred miles while Sam slept some more and then I'd get us a motel room and more milk and more sleep and more Sam not dying.

Sam hadn't gotten that memo yet apparently. He was still upright and awake in the shotgun seat.

"_Anytime_." I told him.

"Anytime what?"

"You can go to sleep, anytime."

He kind of shook his head, making me wonder he could be possibly objecting to.

"I can wait 'til we get to the cabin."

"Cabin?"

"Yeah, Rufus's cabin? We're near there, aren't we?" He looked out the car window, at the buildings and vacant lots and railroad tracks speeding past, trying to orient himself, no doubt. And yeah, we were about a half hour or forty minutes away from our little dry-rot corner of paradise. But I wasn't headed there.

"We're not stopping at the cabin. I'm driving us the hell out of Dodge."

"We can't." Sam told me. "We need to stop."

He was so earnest, so adamant, I had to switch off the autopilot that my brain was still on and consider what he was saying, what he meant. He was going on better than a week of total sleep deprivation, eight days of near starvation and at least four days of close-enough-to-call-it dehydration, he'd been hit by a car three days and some change ago and he'd just had his brains deep-fried. He had to feel like crap on toast. I started planning to stop only one state over instead of three, until Sam informed me,

"You need to rest."

"_Me_?" I asked him. _He_ was telling me that _I_ needed to rest? "I got a few states left in me, Sammy, before we need to stop. We're getting the hell away from here."

Away from this town, from that hospital.

From everyone _in_ that hospital.

Sam was quiet a minute and then, like he was afraid I might not like the question and he didn't have the strength to withstand the explosion of an answer, he quietly asked me,

"Where'd you find Cas, anyway?"

"Colorado." I told him. I was about to give him a little more detailed explanation but 'tired, quiet, and fragile' suddenly gave way to really really _pissed_.

"_**Colorado?**_**" **He barked at me in his deep, deep, rumble of thunder voice. "_Seriously? _In the last _three days_ you drove from Montana to Colorado and back again? _You need to rest."_

I was tired. I was beyond tired. I'd nearly lost Sam and now I had him back again. I'd gotten Cas back and now I'd lost him again. I was exhausted and messed up and surviving on fumes and I was in no mood to argue with Sam.

"_Dean_?" Sam gave me then, because I hadn't answered him. Because he hadn't gotten the 'I'm not in a mood to argue' memo. So I answered him back in my _100% guaranteed to make Sam give in and be quiet_ 'Dad' voice warning.

"_Sam..._"

That would make him shut up and shut down and _friggin' go to sleep_.

Only - it only made him point his finger at me and bark again,

"_No_. Do _not_ 'Sam' me. You're exhausted, Dean. You need to rest."

"_I can drive, Sam."_ I snarled back at him. "_We're getting out of here_."

"How much sleep have you had in this past week, Dean? Hunh? In this whole past week, have you gotten even thirty hours of sleep?"

"_Yes_." I answered immediately. _Too_ immediately for my own good because just like that, my little mathlete brother had already done the numbers and was purposely tripping me up.

"Oh, really? So if you got no sleep these past three days, which I know you didn't, that means you got thirty hours of sleep in the previous four days which means you got pretty much the full eight each of those nights? You forget I was _there_? And _awake _those four days and nights? I _know_ how much sleep you didn't get."

"_Would you please shut the freakin' hell up?" _I demanded. "You're the one just got dumped off the Crazy Train. I don't need to sleep."

"_Yes, you do." _Sam shouted at me.

"_No, I don't." _I shouted back at him. Great, we were reduced to shouting at each other. "_Sam, you're the one who hasn't slept in a week, hasn't eaten, the one who played piñata to a speeding car and just got served your brains flambéd. YOU need to sleep, not me."_

Sam's breathing started coming heavy, his shoulders lifting and dropping with each breath. He was _pissed_. Pissed and starting to consider that I really did have shit for brains.

"_You're the one who hasn't had a break in how many __**years**__."_ He ground out at me. His voice was low and measured, but the shouting hadn't been left far behind, I could tell. "Never mind looking out for Dad, looking out for me, looking out for the _family_ all those years, going to hell, fighting off demons and angels all the while carrying the Apocalypse like a millstone around your neck – just these past couple of years how much have you been through?"

I started to tell him that I didn't care what I'd been through, but he didn't give me a chance.

"I'll tell you what you've been through - Jo and Ellen _died_, Anna _died_, Bobby had to kill his wife _again_, Gabriel died, Adam died and then came back only to _die again_…"

_Don't care, don't care, don't care…_ I thought and tried to say out loud, except Insomnia-Boy wouldn't let me talk.

"You lost Lisa and Ben," he kept on.

_I __**swear**__ I don't care._

"You lost Cas and you lost Bobby."

_I can't afford to care._ I was going to say that to Sam. _I don't care because I can't afford to care._ We were at a red light and I was going to use the moment to shove the damn _'shut up and go to sleep already' _memo down Sam's sleep-deprived throat.

"_I don't care_, _we're outta here."_

Only Sam still wasn't done. I've got one really strong weak spot and he knew what it was and how to get right to it.

"What about your _brother_, Dean? You care about _him_? How many times have you lost _him_? How many times have you watched your brother die, or suffer, or just plain walk away from you? You nearly lost him, _again,_ this past week, and if wasn't for some weird-ass miracle of finding Cas, you _would've_ lost him, permanently this time, and you knew it. You _know_ it. So don't try to tell me that you got _any_ sleep this past week, because I know you didn't. You wouldn't, not when your brother needed you. _You need to rest."_

The one thing he knew I couldn't dispute caring about. _Him_.

The traffic light turned green then, and I turned my attention back to the road.

"I have to keep moving." I told Sam. _Admitted to him._ "I stop moving, it's like I'll die."

And _damn_, if saying that didn't make me feel ten times more exhausted than I felt already. And I wasn't talking about Leviathans or demons or even just plain old 5-O coming after us. I was just talking about _me. _I was talking about being tired of being all the time in survival mode, tired of wondering if buying gas _this_ time would end up with us getting killed by the Leviathans, tired of not being able to protect Sam or Bobby, not being able to save Cas or the world. I was just damn tired of everything_. _I was tired of being _tired_.

And the longer I could keep moving, the longer I could keep moving. If I stopped - if I stopped, I might just never start up again.

Sam must've known or seen or realized what I was feeling or how I was feeling it. He dialed his 'rumble of thunder' voice back to his 'concerned little brother' near-whisper.

"Four hours, man. That's all I'm asking. _Four hours_."

And I still _so_ wanted to just crash, into some bed, any bed, at the cabin, in a roach motel, even just across the front seat of this car. But I couldn't. I _couldn't_. Sam's black eyes and broken rib, his road-rash elbow, lacerated wrist and rotting fingernails all told me that I couldn't.

"No. Not yet." I shook my head. "Not 'til I get us somewhere safe. Somewhere I can get you patched up."

"Dean – I'm fine."

"Pfft – _yeah. _You're _fine."_

"_LOOK."_ Rumble of Thunder was back and rumbled at me. "For the first time in how long I've got no Lucifer in my brain, scrambling my eggs. No damn wall held up with chewing gum and shoestrings just waiting to topple me over into insanity. For the first time in how many years - no visions, no blood dependence, no hell like a freight train charging straight for either one of us. We might have Leviathans gunning for us and demons on our asses but - _hey_ - there's no dick angels after us this time, that's a plus. I might be exhausted and banged up, but I'm alert and oriented, and I can eat, walk, talk, breathe and probably _sleep _all on my own, so - _yeah _- I'd say _I'm pretty damn fine_."

He ended his rant on a huff and I was gonna huff him right back but then - I couldn't. Sammy was giving me a death glare, but I couldn't say anything or do anything but look away. I didn't smile, but I could feel a smirk building and I knew that if I looked at him, my face would betray what I was feeling.

Sam Winchester - who never met a person he thought he was better than, who never met a woman he ever thought he was good enough for, who even now looked like a down-on-his-luck backwoods zombie who'd had way too much caffeine - had just declared himself to be '_pretty damn fine'. _

Who was I to disagree?

"_What?"_ Sam demanded from me then. He must've seen my face and it only took him a second to figure out what I was smirking about and he rolled his eyes. _"You know what I mean."_

I kind of shrugged a nod in agreement but didn't say anything, only the smirk kept building, and in another minute or so, Sammy laughed too.

"You know what I mean," he said again, in his '_stop making me laugh when I'm trying to be serious_' tone.

"I didn't say a word." I told him, in my '_but you know I was thinking it'_ tone.

Sam laughed and sighed and shook his head and got right back to it.

Of course.

"Dean - really. I'm serious. I need to know you're okay. You need to rest. All I'm asking is four hours._"_

I decided to give up arguing with Sam and just _drive_. Eventually, he'd fall asleep. He needed to rest. He needed to sleep for like the next five days straight. I _wanted_ to sleep the next five days straight, but what I wanted _more_ was –

I looked at Sam. At my giant-little-mathlete-zombie-on-too-many-and-yet-not-enough-drugs brother.

He needed to sleep. I was sure he even _wanted_ to sleep. But what he wanted _more_ was the same thing I wanted more than anything else – for my brother to be safe and okay.

"Dean – _please_."

And well-rested.

"All right. _Four hours._ That's it. We stop for some food, head to the cabin, and then in four hours, we're on the road again and you're asleep in the backseat. Got it?"

And Sam nodded.

"Got it."

Another block on, I turned the corner and got us on the road that would take us to the cabin. Next to me, Insomnia-Boy stayed upright and awake.

"_Anytime."_ I told him.

He huffed and smiled, but shook his head.

"I can wait 'til we get to the cabin."

To Be Continued


	2. Chapter 2

Turns out Pretty Damn Fine was Pretty Damn Stubborn.

Every time Sam's eyes blinked closed, I thought they'd stay closed. But they didn't. Every time, every single time, his eyes would open again – though not all the way – and he'd stare out the windshield like he was holding on by sheer strength of will.

"Sam – really – I'm going to the cabin. Close your eyes."

He gave me a disbelieving look. An exhausted, disbelieving look.

"Might change your mind." He said, _muttered_, instead of outright suggesting that I might lie.

Me? Lie?

_Busted._

"Sammy – I _promise_ – I'm driving to the cabin. I'm going to stop and get some milk for your delicate stomach, but we're going to the cabin to get some sleep. Okay? I promise."

"_You need to sleep_." He told me, with his black eyes getting blacker and his slow speech getting slower.

"I will sleep, Sam. It's okay. You can get some rest until we get to the cabin. I'll be okay until we get there."

"Okay. Yeah. Good." He turned back to the windshield.

And still didn't close his eyes all the way.

_Siiiigh_, I never met anybody so stubborn. Not even Dad had anything on Sammy.

I didn't push him, though. Him hanging onto wakefulness by his decayed fingernails for half an hour more was way better than how he'd survived the drive it took to get us from Frank's place to the cabin less than a week before. Sam had gotten so far gone that night, losing it little bit more by little bit more, that he was practically pulling his hair out and retching on himself by the time we got to the cabin.

And when we did get there, finally, he paced for hours, flinching away from the shadows in his brain, while I tried to distract him, reassure him, even just _reach_ him, until he managed to run out of the cabin during the two and three quarter minutes I was in the bathroom.

So, now, if he wanted to sit in the car, awake, for a little while longer, it was okay by me. He'd sleep when he slept and when he did, like everything else he did, it would be absolute. So, let him enjoy the quiet for half an hour. He was safe and sane and next to me. That was all totally okay by me.

When we got to the last quickie mart before the cabin, I pulled into the parking lot.

"We there?" Sam asked, sounding - for all his eyes not closing - like he'd been sound asleep. He also sounded so hopeful that we were at the cabin that I hated to have to tell him the truth.

"Just making a quick stop for food. I won't be five minutes."

"Oh. 'Kay." He sagged against the door. "I'll wait."

I didn't ask what he thought his alternative option was.

I made a fast grab of a gallon and a couple of quarts of whole milk and a pint of plain yogurt. The pimply clerk gave a bored and sulky look between me and my purchases, like I was required to explain to him why I was getting so much dairy products.

"_I got a sick cat_." I snarked at him. He got the point and checked me out and bagged the stuff and I went back to the car.

Sam was sitting upright again, sort of upright. Not leaning against the door anymore anyway.

"Practicing your people skills, again?" He asked me. He jerked his chin to the window where 'Bored and Pimply' – and the expression on his face - was clearly visible at the register.

"_Honing_ them, as a matter of fact." I said. Sam got the analogy and smiled. Still tired, still exhausted, but smiling. "How're you doing?" I asked him.

"S'quiet. Everything's quiet. S'weird."

"I bet it is."

"M'kinda enjoying it…"

I could understand that. I'd been back for I don't know how many months before 'hell as background noise' finally tapered off. And when it did, it was weird and familiar and loud and quiet all at the same time. I could understand Sammy wanting to enjoy it and needing to adjust to it, but still…

"It'll be quiet while you sleep, too." I pointed out.

"I know – just – wanna listen to it, little bit longer."

He was telling me, but he was also asking my permission, and if I said, 'go to sleep', he'd go to sleep.

So I didn't tell him. I gave in.

"All right. God knows you earned the right to do whatever you want to do."

"_Thanks."_

And he stayed awake for the next fifteen minutes it took us to get to the cabin.

I parked at the front porch and Sam looked up at it like it was the biggest building and the steepest front steps he'd ever seen.

"Can you make it?" I asked.

"Yeah. Sure. Think so."

_Riiiight._

"All right, Van Winkle. Let's get you inside. Then I'll bring out gear in."

"He wasn't sleep deprived." Sam said. "Rip Van Winkle slept a hundred years."

"And so are you." I told him. "C'mon, get inside and get started on those hundred years."

He gave me a tired bitchface.

"You know he slept for a hundred years 'cause he lived with a _nag_?"

I ignored that.

"I will carry you inside, Sammy."

He huffed or sighed or maybe he was just trying and failing to yawn.

"I can do it. Don't need help."

_Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight._

But I let him get started while I brought in our dairy products. And our duffels. And Sam's backpack. And his computer bag. And the cooler. And while I pulled the car around the back of the cabin.

By then, only by then, Sam had made it all the way up the steps, across the narrow porch and into the cabin.

Sleep and recovery – for _both_ of us - were practically in sight.

Sam set himself down on his bunk like he was in slow motion. Then he looked around like he was waiting for a clown to jump out at him from behind a door.

"How're you doing, Sammy? Why don't you lay down?"

"I gotta take a shower."

"_Excuse me_? Cas said he'd put you back on your feet, but I don't think he meant literally."

"I have to get the smell of the hospital off of me."

He stood up while I was still gearing up my argument, and started to shuck out of his clothes. And _God_ - the bruises and road rash just on his legs from getting hit by that car. The rest of him had to look just as bad. How a guy could get taken out at the knees like Sammy did and only break a rib, I just don't know.

Once he was down to his t-shirt and boxers, he dropped to sit on his bed like his legs gave out.

"Sam?"

"I just need a minute." He breathed out. He pressed a hand against his ribs. "Just – just a minute."

"Want one of the painkillers I had for my leg?"

He looked up at me and only nodded and didn't say anything. So I brought him one of the good ones and a quart of milk and he took the pill and finished down the whole quart of milk in just a few swallows.

"C'mon, Sammy. Sleep. You can take a shower when you wake up again. Right now, you need to sleep."

"So do you."

"And the sooner you go to sleep, the sooner I go to sleep, right?"

"I'm sorry about Cas." He said. I pretended not to hear him. I wasn't ready to talk about it yet. Or even think about it.

"Under the blankets, Sam."

"No." He shook his head. "_Shower_."

He pushed to his feet, made it almost all the way upright, and shuffled toward the tiny tiny bathroom. He'd forgotten to bring any clean clothes with him, so I dug clean boxers out of his backpack and carried them to him as he was _still_ shuffling to the bathroom.

He looked at them like he didn't know what they were or what they were for.

"Shorts, Sam, you'll need them. It might've been okay to let you walk around in all your glory when you were three, but the novelty has kind of worn off, you know?"

"I'm gonna be cold." He said.

"This is only until I get a look at all your scrapes and scratches. Make sure none of them need taking care of."

"I was in a hospital."

"And did you know that death rates go down when doctors go on strike?"

"I think that's just because of elective surgeries being cancelled and so the incidence of complications –"

"Sam – I'd like to get some sleep in _this_ decade." I held the boxer shorts out to him again.

"Hunh? Oh – yeah, thanks." He fumbled them out of my hands and then rubbed his face. "I should shave too."

"Shave when you wake up again."

"I don't like sleeping if I need to shave." He said it like it was the most logical argument in the world. And that was it, that used up the last nerve I had that was still awake.

"Sammy – for the love of God – _take a shower and go to bed."_

He gave me his '_I've just been scolded and I __**so**__ did not deserve it_…' face.

And really, I was so tired, I was too tired to cave..

"You gonna make me _give _you a shower?" I asked him. "Because I will. I _can_ and I _will_."

Yeah, it took a dozen long seconds to work through his brain, but it finally registered with Sam what I was saying and that I was serious about it.

He 'hmmphed' and shuffled – finally – into the tiny bathroom and slammed the door.

Okay, the door doesn't close 100%, it's warped or the floor is bowed or something, so he didn't actually slam it. But I figured slamming was his intention, so I gave him the credit for it.

"Make it a _fast_ shower." I called after him.

"_Uh hu-UH-nnh_…" he sing-songed from behind the door.

Bitch.

When the shower turned on, I built a roaring fire in the woodstove and then hunted up our first aid kit and pulled the sweatpants and t-shirt that Sam slept in out of his backpack. I wanted to take care of his road-rash and then rush him – and me - off to sleep just as fast as I possibly could.

I didn't have long to wait, fortunately. Very, very fortunately. If I had to hold out much longer, I'd be taking care of Sammy with my eyes closed. The shower shut off, the bathroom door squeaked open, and a very tall, very tired, very battered - but very clean – scruffy zombie made the short trek from bathroom to bed.

He sank down onto the mattress and reached for his PJs. I pushed his hand away.

"_Cold." _He whined.

"Just give me a minute to look you over and then you can get dressed."

I gave him a fast once-twice-thrice over. His knees and the entire right half of his back and shoulder and rib cage were bruised and scraped and scabbed and weeping after his shower. His right forearm was scabbed but nearly healed. His left wrist had a deeper scratch on it that wasn't half healed yet.

"_Cold_." He said again.

"I know. C'mon. Let's get this done."

I squeezed a blob of antibiotic salve on each of his knees, "There, rub that in," while I patted a bigger blob of it over the map of Belgium over and around his ribs and shoulder blade. "All right, let me see that wrist."

He offered up his torn wrist, and watched while I salved it, gauzed it, and bandaged it up nice and secure.

"Can I – can I?" He wiggled his fingers at the antibiotic salve and I gave him another blob of it, probably to dose up his forearm.

But grabbed my right wrist, hard, and patted his dollop across the raw knuckles I'd battered against a demon or eight in the past few days.

"Sam-"

"Rub that in." He ordered me.

I huffed, or sighed – okay, I yawned – and did as my little brother told me.

"Happy?" I asked, and he nodded. "All right, then. Get your PJs on while I pack up the first aid. You want some more milk?" He shook his head. "Yogurt?"

"What flavor?"

"Plain."

"Ugh." He wrinkled his nose and pulled on his sweatpants and t-shirt and eased himself into the bed and under his blankets.

"Thanks, Dean." He said, not looking at him. He finally had his eyes closed all the way. "Thanks for taking care of me."

And I looked at my battered, salved knuckles.

"You too."

tbc...sometime or other...


	3. Chapter 3

Sam shut his eyes and was gone, gone, _gone_.

That was long past_ about damn time. _

I left him to his undisturbed sleep and took my own fast shower. Then I gathered up his dirty laundry and mine off the bathroom floor and carried it all out into the main room to shove into my duffle.

I'd barely taken two steps into the room though and I had to stop. The cabin was quiet. Everything was quiet. For the first time in how long – and I was too tired to try and remember – everything was quiet, everything was still.

Even Sam, bundled under the scratchy blankets on the thin mattress and the lumpy pillow, with a twist of wet bangs laying across his eyes, even Sam was still. There was just the sound and movement of his slightly snoring breathing and that was all. No twitches, no whimpers, no agony. He was asleep. Sound asleep.

Time for me to be asleep too.

I pushed our dirty clothes into my duffel, set my watch alarm for four hours and pretty nearly collapsed into my own thin, lumpy, scratchy bed.

And promptly fell asleep. Deep, deep asleep.

Even I was surprised how fast four hours could go by.

Before I knew it, and sure before I wanted it, my watch alarm was nagging me to get up.

The sun was high and getting higher; even after four hours, it was still only morning. I rolled myself out of bed and scrubbed my face and fought the urge to just lie back down again. I went over to check on Sam; if nothing else I could get us all packed up and ready to head out while he got another twenty or thirty minutes of sleep.

But Sam was so sound asleep, he hadn't moved a twitch. He hadn't even turned his head he was so asleep, that same twist of hair that was laying across his right eye when he laid down was still across his right eye. Waking him up now, even just to walk to the car and go straight back to sleep again, didn't seem like a very nice thing to do to him. Maybe Winkin' could take one more lap around Blinkin' & Nod.

But – true to Sammy form – as I turned away to reset my watch alarm, Winkin' blinkin' woke up.

"Dean?" He bleared around until his eyes found me. He tried to sit up. "Z'it time? T'go?"

"No, no Sammy. It's not time. Not yet."

He believed me, nodding, easing carefully back onto his pillows.

"Z'it too soon for 'nother painkiller?"

"No. I'll get you one. Some more milk too."

"Mmmm hmmm…no yogurt…"

"No yogurt." I promised him. I turned to get him another dose of the good painkillers and a huge glassful of milk and when I turned back, he'd managed to ease himself sitting up on the edge of the bed, with his feet on the floor and his shoulders rolled down and his eyes barely open.

"What do you think you're doing?" I asked.

"Just – wanna – sit f'r minute."

"You can sit laying down too, you know."

I thought I'd get a '_and I can spot bullshit even half unconscious'_ look, but he only shook his head and reached for the meds and milk and swallowed them both down.

When he was done, he only just sat there, thinking about something. I thought maybe he was going to pester me again to let him shave.

But he had something entirely different in mind.

"I thought I was going to die." He said. Whispered. "In the hospital, I thought I was going to die and you wouldn't be there."

Yeah, I'd been afraid of the exact same thing. I didn't say that to him, of course. I crouched down in front of him so I could meet his eyes, so he'd meet mine.

"When have we ever died when we weren't together?" I asked him. I gave him a few seconds to say 'never'.

"Lightning." He said though, after those few seconds. "I got hit, by lightning, when we – with the – that magic coin, the magic teddy bear. I got hit by lightning and you weren't there."

I'd forgotten about that. The lightning had blown him right out of his sneakers, and I'd been on the other side of town. He'd died, even briefly, alone.

My immediate thought was to come back with, 'but there's no lightning inside buildings', but my second immediate thought was that getting walloped with high voltage electroshock therapy was probably a hell of a lot like lightning.

Maybe I should tell him he needed to go shave.

"I was _not_ going to let you die in that hospital, alone or otherwise. It just wasn't going to happen. All right?"

He probably knew I was talking out of my hat, but he nodded and gave me his _'thanks for that'_ smile.

"Y'sure it's not time t'get up?" He asked as he gave me back the empty glass. He looked around the room and probably at the change in sunlight and shadows across the floor.

"Yeah, see?" I flashed him my watch which I knew he'd never be able to make out. "Four hours isn't up yet."

"Oh. 'Kay." He accepted it easily and laid down and reached up awkwardly to push that hair out of his eyes. "Then you should go back t'sleep, Dean. It's…."

__

Just like that, he was out again.

"I will get right on that, Sammy."

First though, I grabbed the first aid kit and pulled back the blanket to have a look at his fingers and road rash. He slept on while his scraped arm got a dose of antibiotic cream, even if it really didn't need it, and each Little Indian got a look close up and personal to make sure the nail wasn't going to get ripped off snagging on the blankets if Sam did get restless in his sleep.

Everything looked okay, no danger of losing a nail, but I left his hands outside of his blanket anyway, just in case, and packed away the first aid kit. After that, I should've just dumped myself back into bed and no-dream-land, but the silence caught me again. The stillness.

I'd been here before, lots of times. Not here in this cabin, of course. But lots of times, hundreds or probably thousands of times in my life, I'd been _here_, in a quiet room, with a sleeping Sammy, with nothing to do but go to sleep myself.

But _this_ 'here', this day, this moment – there was so much going on inside _this_ moment that I stood frozen in the middle of the room, staring at Sam.

Suddenly, going back to sleep didn't seem such a likely option. I turned to the table and dropped myself into a chair. I rested my head in my hands and for _just_ _right now_, I let myself be nearly overwhelmed with what I was feeling.

I'd been dreading losing Sammy for _how_ many years now? _Seven_? In one way or another I'd been dreading losing Sam since he came back on the road with me, fresh from losing Jess. And I _had_ lost him, on so many levels, in so many ways, so many times, and yet each and every time, I got him back. No matter how or why or how long I'd lost him, each time, against epically, mythically impossible odds, each time I always got my little brother back.

I'd lost every single other thing and person in my life that had ever meant anything to me. But I had Sam back, finally, wholly, completely, _right now_.

A breath choked inside my throat and then another one and I put my hand over my mouth because external pressure always works _so well_ to suppress emotions.

_Not._

_Really_ _not_ it turned out because I managed to wake up my nearly-comatose-little-zombie-brother.

"Dean?" I heard behind me but I didn't turn around. I _couldn't_ turn around. I squeezed my eyes shut and pretended I was somewhere else, doing anything else but sitting at a rickety table, in a musty cabin, breaking down in front of Sam.

I kept them shut even when I heard Sam get up out of bed and walk across the cabin. I heard him open the icebox and set a pot on the stove and I still didn't look to see what he was doing.

In another minute or two though, he came to the table and set something down and then set himself into the other chair.

"_Here."_

I opened my eyes and found myself looking at a glass of milk. A glass of _warm_ milk judging from the little trails of steam rising from it.

I looked from it to Sam.

"You've gotta get some sleep, man." He told me. "Not getting enough sleep does crazy things to you…_and you're crazy enough_."

He said it with a cautious smile. He was giving me a pass for losing it, giving me an excuse, an explanation, an _anything_ other than what it was.

I took it.

"Having to listen to you snore drives me crazy." I told him, and we both ignored how rough my voice sounded.

"Well, I guess if you're asleep, you won't _hear_ me snore."

"Well, I guess if you wouldn't snore, I could _get_ to sleep."

"Well, I guess if you'd let me _shave_, I wouldn't snore."

I gave him a look.

"Really? That's all you got? _Shaving_?"

"You want a poem?" He deadpanned back.

"Sure, what rhymes with 'zombie'?" I asked and took a sip of my _warm milk._ It wasn't half bad. "I'm okay, Sam. You need to get more sleep."

"So do you."

"I _am. See?_" I took a big swallow of the milk. "I'll finish this and then lay down. You can go back to bed."

He didn't move. Of course. He gave me a funny look.

"What? I got a milk mustache or something?"

"No, it's just - this is just the first chance we've had to just sit together - I mean me being _me and only me - _since I can't remember when. It's just - nice. That's all." He got up fast after he said that and put himself back into bed. "And Dean? Wake me up when the _next_ four hours are over."

_Busted._

I finished my milk and put the glass in the sink and put myself back to bed. A thin, lumpy, scratchy bed had never felt so good. I was just _this_ _close_ to falling dead sound asleep again when Sam suddenly called out,

"Abercrombie!"

I turned over to glare at him.

"What? You asked what rhymes with zombie."

I sighed dramatically ~ "_Go to sleep, Sam."_ ~ and smiled when he couldn't see me.

I had Sam back.

The End


End file.
